SXSW documentary and feature films: Marley, We are Legion and more

Synopsis: 3 bands, 6 cities, 1 train, and thousands of miles of track…BIG EASY EXPRESS captures a musical journey. Harkening back to the days of jubilant railroad revivals, three bands set out in April 2011 to tour America by vintage train. Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, Old Crow Medicine Show, and Mumford & Sons climbed aboard amid the rail yards of Oakland and set out for New Orleans on a “tour of dreams.” BIG EASY EXPRESS documents the bands’ railway adventures; the high canyons, joyous crowds, blasted skies, late-night laughter, endless music…and a train that was bound for glory.

Feature Category

21 Jump Street

Synopsis: In the action-comedy 21 Jump Street, Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) are more than ready to leave their adolescent problems behind. Joining the police force and the secret Jump Street unit, they use their youthful appearances to go undercover in a local high school. As they trade in their guns and badges for backpacks, Schmidt and Jenko risk their lives to investigate a violent and dangerous drug ring. But they find that high school is nothing like they left it just a few years earlier – and neither expects that they will have to confront the terror and anxiety of being a teenager again and all the issues they thought they had left behind.

Small Apartments

Synopsis: Small Apartments' Franklin Franklin is a fully realized and sympathetic protagonist in the vein of Ignatius Reilly (A Confederacy of Dunces), a simple man who yearns for “a land of pastoral serenity” devoid of the irritants of contemporary urban life. An off-beat tale, Small Apartments is accented along the way by murder, strange fingernail collections, and the occasional blast from a treasured alphorn.

Gayby

Synopsis: Jenn and Matt are best friends from college who are now in their thirties. Single by choice, Jenn spends her days teaching hot yoga and running errands for her boss. Matt suffers from comic-book writer’s block and can’t get over his ex-boyfriend. They decide to fulfill a youthful promise to have a child together… the old-fashioned way. Can they navigate the serious and unexpected snags they hit as they attempt to get their careers and dating lives back on track in preparation for parenthood? "Gayby" is an irreverent comedy about friendship, growing older, sex, loneliness, and the family you chose.

Killer Joe

Synopsis: When 22-year-old Chris is in hock to a drug lord, he needs money quick and stumbles on the scheme of hiring a hit man to dispatch his mother, whose $50,000 life insurance policy is supposed to go to his sister Dottie. Chris has heard of Joe Cooper, a creepy, crazy Dallas cop who moonlights as a contract killer. Although Joe usually demands cash up front, he finds himself willing to bend the rules and takes Chris' attractive younger sister, Dottie as carnal collateral. A garish, Southwestern Gothic tale, Killer Joe is a shocking, sexy, and violent black comedy that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

Casa de mi Padre

Synopsis: Armando Alvarez (Will Ferrell) has lived and worked on his father's ranch in Mexico his entire life. As the ranch faces financial strains, Armando's younger brother Raul (Diego Luna) shows up with his new fiancée, Sonia (Genesis Rodriguez) and pledges to settle all his father's debts. It seems that Raul's success as an international businessman means the ranch's troubles are over, but when Armando falls for Sonia, and Raul's business dealings turn out to be less than legit, the Alvarez family finds themselves in a full-out war with Mexico's most feared drug lord, the mighty Onza (Gael Garcia Bernal).

*Synopses gathered from the SXSW website